Missing Episodes FOUND!... but are there more?

[Perry Vale]

Wales Online put up a story about it earlier, quickly taken down.

See it here....

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...-found-4571617

[Perry Vale]

One encouraging sign is that his company's service is to locate missing material and return it to the original broadcaster. That's what he does.

I obviously don't know the circles of people (fans) you do, or have heard the Reign commentary, but is that really a viable business? Really? Apart from the BBC's well published wiping of tapes, do broadcasters around the world regularly pay people to try and return old tapes to them? This is the bit that is ringing the 'hoax' bell, for me. His site looked suspicious, to me, with someone saying it was recently redesigned, and the Facebook & Twitter 'follow me' links at the bottom of it's homepage being redundant.

And that PROOF that Levine is going on about is exactly NOT THAT. It's just a page on the world wide web, it isn't in fact 8000 cans of film...

[Si Hunt]

That article is hilarious!

“Speaking as a fan though, it would be great to see some of those old shows again because, other than a rough outline of the plot, there’s not an awful lot known about them.”

If only there were photos! Or soundtracks! Or scripts! Imagine!

And there’s one scene in particular that he’d love to see first hand.

“Legend has it that somewhere out there is the original footage of William Hartnell transforming into his successor Patrick Troughton – the Doctor’s very first regeneration. Wouldn’t that be great to see?”

IMAGINE BEING ABLE TO SEE THAT!

Si.

[Philipnet]

Someone,
shoot them,
please!

-
Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

[Simon R]

Freddie Jaeger popped up in the Keeping Up Appearances we just watched. That must be a good sign that The Savages is back.

[Si Hunt]

It's an omen! Freddie Jaeger has appeared and decreed it thus!

Si.

[Andrew Curnow]

Mr Levine's twitter feed seems to refer to it with a great deal of absolute certainty...

...so it probably is all rubbish after all!!

[Perry Vale]

There's just something not quite right about all of this. 8000 film cans, supposedly, yet all the following 18 months have delivered from this person (back to the BBC) is two episodes of The Sky At Night.

That original post from the person who remembered "some guy" taking delivery of a load of old film cans, specifically mentioning DW, a couple of years ago, then this same person recognising the guy's name on a DW dvd commentary, it just doesn't sound right.

Then there's his company's facebook page (which does now link from his website homepage, although it didn't yesterday).....where the company's 'About' page says it was founded in......1963!? An amazing coincidence? The business e-mail address is a Hotmail one, and company phone number is a mobile.

THE WORLDS BIGGEST ARCHIVE AID AND RECOVERY ORGANISATION
Mission
To Aid television stations around the world in the preservation of there national heritage ,while also recovering copies of missing british tv and radio programming for future generations of all nationalities
Company Overview
THE WORLDS FOREMOST ARCHIVE RECOVERY AND PRESERVATION COMPANY
INCORPORATING MANY DEPARTMENTS OF TECHNICAL EXPERTISE IN ALL AREAS
OF TELEVISUAL MEDIA OUR MISSION STATEMENT IS TO ASSIST TV STATIONS WORLDWIDE TO PRESERVE THERE NATIONAL CULTURE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
Description
ARCHIVE PRESERVATION UNIT
ARCHIVE PLAYBACK PRESERVATION WORKSHOP
MACHINE AND EQUIPMENT STORE
T.I.E.A ARCHIVE UNIT

They use a lot of capital letters!

Still, a most fascinating "episode" for fandom playing out in front of us, very entertaining if nothing else. I do hope I'm wrong though.

[SiHart]

A statement has been made on the TEIA Facebook page this morning...

A BRIEF STATEMENT .
T.I.E.A DOES NOT HOLD ANY MISSING EPISODES OF THE LONG RUNNING DR WHO SERIES. THE ORIGINAL VIDEO TAPES WERE WIPED SUBSEQUENT FILM COPIES WERE EITHER RETURNED TO THE BBC AND SENT TO LANDFILL ODD FRAGMENTS HAVE SURFACED TWO EPISODES ON 16MM FILM BUT THATS IT. THE PROGRAMMES IN QUESTION LIKE MANY OTHERS WERE DESTROYED AS THEY HAD NO FURTHER COMMERCIAL VALUE .THEY ARE NOT MISSING ...BUT DESTROYED THE END.I am sorry if this upsets some people but these are the facts.I have also become aware of the tracking of some of our clients shipments these are local cultural materials sent to us for migration to a modern format as the playback equipment in the country of origin no longer exists and as such is the best road to preserve international cultural heritage .I will be making no more statements on this subject.Philip MORRIS Executive director T.i.e.a

[Rob McCow]

Phew! And the hoax is over.

[Si Hunt]

Oh dear.

It's a strange statement from someone who is a self-proclaimed Doctor Who fan who we were told, by BBC representatives last year, was actively searching for lost episodes. He makes it sound like only two episodes have ever been recovered.

[SiHart]

I suspect he's very pissed off, probably got an inbox full of emails from Who fans and has had enough.

[Si Hunt]

What did he expect?

Si.

[Philipnet]

Well, at least this has been quashed before the weekend!

[Antony Cox]

A shame, but inevitable I suppose...

[Si Hunt]

I'm going to try my best to believe this, as to be honest it's not doing me any good having this huge hope that won't get resolved either way for another six months.

But it's all very odd. If it's false, you'd hope people like Bignell would have been on-line to quash it a lot sooner, and I'd actually feel cross that the RT weren't more vigorous in knocking this in a hat before we all got our hopes up. On the other hand, let's be honest this "statement" is just plain odd. We KNOW for a fact that this guy is out there searching for missing Doctor Who's, or has been, so this is like shouting in someones face "EVERYTHING WAS DESTROYED OKAY?!". Sorry, but it borders on rude.

THEY ARE NOT MISSING ...BUT DESTROYED THE END.

Well, no. If we'd thought like this we wouldn't have found "Airlock" would we? Unless he's exhausted his search and is now confident everywhere has been scoured.

If he didn't expect us to have hope, why was he looking in the first place? He just might have let us down a bit more gently. Also what gives him the right to effectively claim nothing more exists anyway?

I hate to say it, because I really need to stop believing this, but it has the air of someone who's posted a flat denial just to get everyone off his back.

Si.

[Philipnet]

EVERYBODY DIED,

OK???

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I'm willing to suspect that there may be *something* yet to be returned/announced but the notion of a huge job lot of episodes always had a wiff of implausibility about it.

[Simon R]

Ian Levine says he's offering no more comment about this but thinks there's more to this than meets the eye.

I don't know what to believe anymore. I really wish I could stop thinking about it. I want this all to die down now unless anything is announced. Everyday there's a new twist in the tale and it's driving us all loopy.

[dalekkiller]

So the rumour's over then thank god

[Matthew T]

Well, Ian has decided he now believes it again.

[brandynigma]

"Doctor Who season!"
"Sky at Night season!"
"Doctor Who season!"
"Sky at Night season!"
"Doctor Who season!"
"Sky at Night season!"
"Star Trek season!"
"...."
"Well, that's never going to happen again, is it?"

[Nyder]

My search for missing Doctor Who episodes here in Switzerland has proved fruitless.

If that's any help.

Probably not.

As you were.

[Jason Thompson]

Am I the only one who was completely underwhelmed by any of this stuff? All we got were rumours, un-named sources, speculation, and Ian Levine swinging back and forth like a manic metronome (and yes, Mr Levine, we will happily quote you on your statement that there will always be 106 missing episodes, since you have made that statement before about whatever number of missing episodes there was at the time and at least four episodes have turned up since). Even when it came out who was supposed to have returned the episodes I still couldn't get excited about it in the absence of any firm announcement. No-one who had 'proof' or 'evidence' actually claimed to have seen any of the supposedly returned episodes, so to me it was never a serious thing worth getting excited over.

Since I've been a fan of the show eight missing episodes have been recovered (Tomb, The Crusade 1, DMP 2 and the two from last year), and as far as I can recall none of them were preceded by wild speculation and rumours. On the other hand, we have had rumours galore that have turned out to be nothing. I just couldn't get excited about any of this because to me it was never a serious possibility. For me it's official announcements or it hasn't happened.

Having said that I do occasionally wish I could get excited about the mere possibility of returned episodes. Maybe I'm just too jaded by the hoaxes and rumours that have flown around before.

[Si Hunt]

Am I the only one who was completely underwhelmed by any of this stuff? All we got were rumours, un-named sources, speculation, and Ian Levine swinging back and forth like a manic metronome

Maybe you didn't get the full story. Philip Morris has been scouring Africa looking for missing episodes using legitimate business channels and financial backing to do so (this is fact, as detailed by the Restoration Team at this years Gallifrey Convention). This lengthy search was/is HUGELY exciting. It's the first time that anyone has properly tried to track down the missing stories - like, with a proper effort and proper backing. Maybe it feels like a flash in the pan because you only heard about this in the last week or so. In a way, I wish I had! But many have been aware this has been going on for around 18 months, so it's been far from a "flash in the pan". It feels like the best hope of a proper missing episode find ever, and it's been a year and a half of hoping against all hope. We still haven't, to my satisfaction, received a proper account of what, if anything, he found, as it naturally seems odd to finish such an organised and lengthy search with a hastily written website message along the lines of "THERE WAS NOTHING, OK?!". I welcome the opportunity to believe the statement, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't eventually a more concise and interesting account of what happened during the search.

Si.